chapter 8 - generation games

I’m amazed at how many Russian words have crept into Babby’s vocabulary even though she never lived here. She is even starting to sing snippets of old Russian folk songs, childhood tunes she must have learned from her father. She tells me stories about her siblings, people who are mostly just names on Christmas cards to me, people who become real, with family faults I see in myself and my sisters. Dad sounds like the carbon copy of her brother Dimitri. Serious, conscientious, concerned about what the world thinks of him and his family, everything logical, even his sock drawer methodically colour coded.

My father, a man who would spend hours learning the rules of some board game but who never enjoyed playing it. Who thought nothing of explaining some difficult math problem no matter what time of day or night but who never asked why it was important to solve that particular problem, as long as a teacher or a boss said it was important, it was. A man who had no time for newfangled things but who would spend hours hovered over the latest catalogue of new bean varieties to grow each year, memorizing attributes and parentage. A man who judged himself and others by social convention, always comparing himself to the world, but never changing. Always finding his children lacking. A man who tried to understand my love of maps but never the love of travel behind it.

Babby is loosening up and enjoying herself. This must be what she’s like in Reno, her favourite holiday place. At home she’s quite abstinent, denying herself even simple treats because she couldn’t let go of the lessons learned during two world wars and the Depression and what she hears in the news. Yesterday she surprised me by declining sour cream, saying “I am worrying about my cholesterol.” I almost spat up my blini. 84, tiny as a doll and healthy as a horse! ‘Have the sour cream’, I wanted to say. ‘Have a tub of it! You’re 84 - deny yourself nothing.’ I didn’t have to say it though. She snuck a spoonful when she thought no one was looking.

Myself I am enjoying seeing how life revolves around baby Vasily. He is a poppet, a smiling Buddha, fat, good natured and bland, but you’d think he was king the way his every desire was anticipated. Seeing his mother’s curly hair and his father’s pointy ears together in one new little body, I suddenly miss Sidney’s kids, now in Edmonton, and even Sam’s dogs, which I have to admit do actually look a lot like her. I think it’s the eyes.

I had never really worried about having children myself seeing as there has never been any real opportunity. But now, my great age of 34 seems to be a green light for everyone to tell me how important, how necessary it is to be married and have children. I see Vasily smile at me and for the first time wonder what it would be to have such a smiling piece of oneself.